Pages

Thursday, February 27

Be still my heart, I have one of these .................................

I've heard of them before as kids toys with felt tips, but never tried one out. I got mine from Craft Obsessions. Playing around with Distress Markers (although it works with all sorts of other pens) has been great fun.

This one uses the Tim Holtz star stencil spritzed with a little Squeezed lemonade before I started, then through the stencil, then finished with Ripe Persimmon for a two coloured effect.

Here on a DIY Shop tag from American Crafts in my favourite brown, Gathered Twigs and inked around the outside in the same colour.

Of course, if you're spritzing with Distress Markers they remain reactive to water for all the other Tim Holtz tricks.

Thursday, February 20

It's been over a week, but I am still here and ready with part #5 of my Return to the Collection pages following Shimelle's course. (if anyone is awake enough to notice part #4 is currently awol, I'm still trying to sort out its journalling.)

The challenge this time around was a double page spread when you don't have any 2 sheets of patterned paper the same.

I chose 2 sheets with a grey base and then used the branding strips from my chosen collection to run across both pages. There's no picture of them side by side as I couldn't find a large enough clear space to photograph them!

More info can be found about the V&A cast courts here. We found them fascinating and the scale of the pillars in particular, the wording on the patterned paper was so appropriate.

Tuesday, February 11

Winter sickness bugs have reached us and we've had a week of some not feeling great and others being very ill indeed. There's some sunshine today, I still have a little one at home, but he is looking much brighter too allowing a few stolen moments to get back to my scrapbooking project.

I blogged the part #1 details here for Return to the Collection, along with a page that I was not so happy with, and explained how I had made the rest of the pages once I had seen all 6 parts to the course. One thing that was apparent straight away was that the photos I'd chosen were the wrong number for some of the page designs, so I went off topic and chose some extra photos that were in the pile waiting for my attention.

The brights have been kept to the accents, much more pleasing to my eye. The resulting page might have ended up a little under embellished, but I would rather have that than take it the other way. I've just finished sorting out my die-cuts and chipboards into just one box, following the purchase of a new set of shelves, and now they are more accessible a few may find their way onto this page.

Part #3 also involved pictures outside of the ones I had originally planned to use. In this case it was because the layout involved big impact from a central image which was just what I wanted for these shots of the boys beautiful blue eyes.

I found some heart stickers this time to scatter along the diagonal as well as a few ink splatters and the whole page feels more complete to me.

The challenge of some double page spreads coming up in parts #4 and #5.

Monday, February 3

My creative efforts over the weekend have been focused on Shimelle's recent course Return to the Collection. It's challenged me in ways I hadn't expected and has been a great way to ease into creativity for 2014.

The main thing I will be taking away from the course is that I have no love for big bold patterned papers used in large quantities on scrapbook pages. I watched the 1st video and chose papers from Amy Tangerine's Yes Please collection (my choice for the course) embracing the bold and the beautiful.

To say I'm not in love with this page is probably an understatement, it's going to see how it sits in the rest of my album before I decide whether it will stay. The fact that I had to patch a mistake in the journaling doesn't help! Fate luckily played a hand in the rest of the course. Colds and flu bugs at work meant I was in demand to provide cover and by the time I got back online there were 2 or 3 videos waiting for me. By the time I'd watched them the rest of the course was live. This meant I watched everything and then prepared all my basic pages together. I cut the bold pieces down and used the pages that I really liked for the backgrounds and everything started to come together.

More on the rest of the pages later in the week once I've finished all the handwriting and embellishments.